Paul Newman and a Ride Home
by HurtComfortHuman
Summary: Ever since his parents died, Ponyboy has been struggling with demons he thought he had under control. But the night Darry hits him, he runs off alone and finds out that some things need to be let out before it's too late. **Alternate book plot, changes to the story before The Outsiders have a butterfly effect down the line. TW for themes of violence, abuse, mental illness**
1. Running Alone

**I've had this story swirling around in my head for a while, so here goes nothing.**

**S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders now and forever, Amen.**

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_Ponyboy's POV_

_He hit me. He really hit me!_

Sure, Darry and I had been fighting a lot since Mom and Dad died, but he'd never actually hit me before. I rubbed my hand lightly over the back of my head where it hit the door. _Poor Johnny._ I thought about all the times I'd seen bruises on him, about the way he shied away from a raised hand sometimes even when it was just one of the guys. He was tough, just like the rest of the gang, but I knew his dad hitting him all the time had done something awful to his head.

_Your head ain't right neither._

That notion had me shaking it, trying to rattle the thought free. It was just losing Mom and Dad that had me feeling sideways, that was all. Hell, I could tell losing them even had Soda and Darry choked up sometimes, though they did their best to hide it from me. They may seem hard to the rest of the world, but I knew my brothers. I knew Sodapop, at least, and he loved Mom and Dad. No way he wasn't missing them no matter how wide he smiled or how many girls he went chasing after. Just another reason I had no place feeling sorry for myself. I was just feeling what everyone else who ever lost a good parent felt. It hurts something awful and you live with it.

_Except you never told them. You never said what you needed to say and now you never will._

As Two-Bit would say, Johnny's my friend because I keep my mouth shut and he doesn't say anything. If I didn't say it before, then there was no reason for me to start crying about it now. But even as the thought occurred, I felt my throat tightening and the pressure building behind my eyes.

I remembered, at least I've always remembered enough to know that what happened back then wasn't right. I've seen pieces of it in my dreams, woken up in cold sweats next to Soda with mean laughter ringing in my ears. I've known it in the dark corners of my room and in the sound of boot heels on concrete when they hit just right and it blew all the other thoughts out of my head for a beat. But I'd choke on the words to tell anyone about it now before they even made it to my tongue, that much I knew.

Just one more thing I couldn't talk to Darry about. He didn't want to hear anything from me. He wanted me to shut up, keep my head down, and get straight A's. To hell with anything else in life, I think he just wanted me out of the house so he could go next. It's not that I didn't know all that he'd sacrificed for me; I did. I just wished he could be my brother again instead of being some kind of fuzz father in my brother's body. Darry should've been in college now, playing football and pulling all the finest-looking girls with his letterman, wolf-whistling and waggling his eyebrows at them like I'd seen Soda do. Instead, he acted like he was already thirty and I was the kid he didn't mean to have.

_There always has been something wrong with you._

Didn't I know it. I could feel it on the back of my head and my shoulder where he'd shoved me. Darry was never supposed to be my dad, my dad was never supposed to die, and maybe I never was meant for anything good.

Ever since the funeral, ever since I stood there between my brothers and watched them lower two caskets into the ground and couldn't even tell which one was my mom and which one was my dad, I felt like there was something loose in my head. There was a wire in there that kept shorting out, sending sparks flying between my ears and my leg jumping a mile a minute. That drove Darry crazy. He'd slap his hand down on my knee bouncing under the table and his eyebrows would pull real close together while he told me to quit it. He said it made him nervous, but I wanted to tell him that I only do it when I was already nervous. When I could already feel that pressure in my head and hear them laughing and know I couldn't just get up and run like I wanted to.

It felt good to run now, to let the cold wind whip my hair into my face and go straight through my t-shirt. My fingers were numb, but even that was good, too. The more of me that could be numb, the better. Even before my parents died, I knew there was something off about me, something making me different from my brothers and how they were always tough without needing to try so hard. They could always talk to people, make friends real easy, but jump into a good fight without blinking, too. I wanted to be like them, but I always felt something tugging in my gut, something pulling me down into my nightmares even when I was wide awake. Now I couldn't shake that damn tugging at all. My gut was twisted in knots all the time and I felt like I was always trying to swallow a cat-eye marble that didn't want to go down.

Everything got me sweating and shaking lately. I could feel eyes burning holes in my back, but when I turned around there was no one there. No one ever looked at me like they look at Soda or Darry, or even Dally or Two-Bit, but I always felt like I was being watched. I was always looking over my shoulder like Johnny did ever since those Socs roughed him up and gave him the scar on his face, except no one was ever following me or even paying me any mind. Not anymore, anyway.

I slowed down some when the park came into view. I suddenly wished I'd gone to the lot to get Johnny instead of just running until I froze. My breath was coming out sharp and icy and my lungs started to burn. I panted and walked the last few blocks until I was on the patch of grass we called a park on this side of town. The fountain was still bubbling away, but the pool for little kids had been drained at the end of the summer and was bone dry by now. I plopped down on the edge and put my head in my hands, pulling at my hair enough for it to smart.

_He shoved me down to the floor, cold concrete pressing hard against my bare shoulder blades. His breath smelled like beer and smokes and his cologne stung my nose and sent the hairs on my neck straight up. I looked in his eyes and tried to tell him again that I just wanted to go back to school, but there was something hard and excited in them, something that scared me even more than his bruising grip on my arms. So instead of pleading, I just looked up at the ceiling, up at the crisscrossed lines of exposed metal beams and creaky water pipes above us. I stared hard and wished I could just float all the way up there where it'd be safe._

I gasped for air and pried my hands off of my eyes. There wasn't time for that. I was sweating something fierce now, despite the cold, and I knew it wasn't just from all the running I'd done. There was never time for those thoughts. I shook my head hard and willed them to the back of my mind, clenching my jaw and balling my hands into fists so tight I felt my nails dig into my palms. It felt good and brought me back down, back to the park where my ass was almost frozen stiff to the edge of the pool beneath me.

I stood up just as the blast of a car horn rang out, making me jump. I whipped around in time to see the blue Mustang from earlier, the one Cherry and Marcia's boys had been driving, sitting at the edge of the park, headlights pointed at me. Five Socs got out and from the way they staggered toward me I knew they'd been drinking. Five to one. Those odds had me shaking even harder, and my chest tightened up painfully, knocking any of the breath I'd managed to catch back out of me. I wished I'd picked up that broken bottle earlier or carried a switchblade like Johnny.

_You should've run, but you were frozen back then, too._

The thought shook me, rooted my feet to the ground. I pictured Darry yelling that I never used my head. I never thought. I just ran, but never when I needed to.

"Well, look who's all alone out here." I recognized him – Bob, Cherry's boyfriend – and he'd clearly been drinking straight since the last time I'd seen him.

"This is the one who thought he could pick up my girl," he said, turning to his friends and passing a flask back to one of them. He took a few steps closer to me and laughed when I stumbled back.

"You know what Greasers are, don't ya?" I didn't bother responding, focused on trying to find a way out. The wires in my head were popping and sparking, dimming the sound around me so bad I couldn't process what he said next. Bob's friends laughed and the one with the flask grabbed the front of my t-shirt in a fist. He smelled like liquor and smoke and the ringing in my head was so loud I couldn't hear anything but his harsh breathing. I felt it hot on my face and something snapped inside me. I pounded my hands against his chest as hard as I could. He stumbled and fell backwards onto the grass with a thud. I knew it was my only chance to get away. I turned and tried to sprint away from their car, but I felt two hands grab the back of my shirt and pull me towards the fountain.

Bob's face was in front of mine then, and he spat a little as he said, "You look like you could use a bath, Grease."

One of them grabbed my ankles then, hauling me over the edge of the fountain. Bob shoved my head under the water and the shock of the cold made me gasp up a wave of water where there should've been air. I tried to scream, but it was muffled by the water and came up as a limp halo of bubbles around me. I kicked the air and pounded my fists against the bottom of the fountain, but the weight pressing me down didn't budge.

_I'm under water again. Of course this is how I die._

* * *

_Darry's POV_

_I hit him. I actually hit him!_

I hadn't moved from the recliner since Ponyboy took off back outside. I knew I should go out after him – the fear of him being out late at night all alone was what had started the whole fight in the first place – but I was too ashamed to move. My dad had never laid a hand on us, not even without meaning to. People said we looked alike, even asked a few times if we were brothers instead of father and son, but I wasn't even half the man he'd been. _God, I miss you, Dad._

"Darry," Soda stood in front of me looking angrier than I'd ever seen him, "what were you thinking?!"

He sounded like me yelling at Pony, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Dropout or not, I always knew Soda was the smartest of the family when it came to people. Smarter than me, that was for sure. I couldn't seem to get through to Ponyboy. Everything I said came out sharp and demanding, but even when I heard how harsh I sounded I still couldn't soften. Fear, the kind I could never confide in anyone about, was what kept the edge there. Fear of messing up, fear of losing anyone else. I looked up at the screen door, still slightly ajar from where Pony had slammed his way out.

"I wasn't, Soda," I said, looking up, feeling older than I had since the funeral, "I was just worried. And angry. He never thinks, he just—"

"Don't!" Soda's face was red, and he pointed an angry finger at me. "Don't blame him for this! You know he's different than us, feels things different than we do. I told you to go easy on him, and this is what you do instead?!"

I knew I deserved his ire, but it stung all the same to hear Soda so genuinely upset. He was always the calm one, the one cracking a joke to break up the tension, the one hugging Pony and giving my shoulder a squeeze and playing the mediator. I let my head hang in my hands and sighed.

"I know. I'm sorry, Sodapop, I know."

He loosened up immediately, his arm dropping back to down to his side as he flopped on the couch. We sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds around us the loud hum of the fridge from the kitchen and the crickets outside. The TV should've been blaring. I should've been telling Pony to wrap up the reading and get to bed. I thought about his face when he'd looked up at me from the ground, his eyes pulled wide in fear and his mouth a perfect 'O' of surprise that made him look even younger than fourteen. I shuddered.

"You know he ain't been right lately," Soda said, breaking the silence and shaking me out of the past.

I thought about it for a moment. Sure, he seemed quiet lately, but he'd always been the quiet one, and I kind of expected him to be moody after losing Mom and Dad. He didn't cry or whine like other kids, but his mouth had been running hard since we lost our parents. I tried to remember being his age, tried to calm myself with thoughts of how much snark and teenage defiance I'd thrown at my parents back then, but Ponyboy seemed to know just how to get under my skin in the fewest words possible. Or maybe my skin was just getting thinner.

"What do you mean?" I finally asked. Soda looked at me for a moment like I had two heads before he sighed again and steepled his fingers together in thought. He was so quiet for a moment it started to scare me.

"Well, he ain't been talking much—"

"I know, but with Mom and Dad gone—" I interrupted, but Soda shot me a glare that shut me up quick.

"It's not just that. Johnny said he ain't been talking to him much, either, and you know how odd it's gotta be for Johnny to speak up about anything." I thought about this for a moment, nodding.

"He has been looking kinda skinny lately, too," I said slowly, trying to think about how he'd looked a year ago. Kids his age were always growing, getting a few inches taller and looking awkward and reedy for a while before they filled out again. But even as I thought it, I knew that wasn't the case for Ponyboy this time. He was always smaller than me and Sodapop, but last week I'd noticed that he looked small even just standing next to a few of his classmates. He was pale lately, too, with dark rings under his eyes. I knew he had nightmares, but Soda would've told me if he thought they were getting worse.

"I think he's been dreaming more," Soda chimed in like he'd been reading my mind, "but he don't talk to me about it. A couple nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and he was just sitting at his desk in the dark, staring out the window."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"He asked me not to," Soda shrugged, but he looked like he felt guilty, "but I think that's just the first time I caught him like that."

Worry wriggled around in my skull like an itch I couldn't scratch. Sometimes I just wanted to shake my youngest brother and make him tell me what was running around in that big head of his. He was too smart to get stuck here, too sensitive and creative to get dragged down by our neighborhood, but if he didn't start using his head or at least letting us in, he would drown here. I felt it starting months ago, but thought I could get strict with him, get him to crunch down on his school work and stay home, away from the fighting and drinking and whatever else the kids in his grade with no where to go were getting up to. For all the yelling I did, Soda would tell me that Pony thought I was mad at him. But it wasn't Ponyboy that I was mad at, it was everyone else. Every_thing_ that had dragged us down and threatened to keep him here the way I'd been kept here. I didn't regret taking charge of my brothers for a moment, but I mourned losing my parents and the future I would've had with them every day.

"I'm going to go look for him," I finally said, standing up and grabbing my jacket. Soda smiled out of one side of his mouth and nodded, standing up too.

"I'll come with you."

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**Sorry this first chapter is a little short, but please read and review. I'll update ASAP. This will be a dark one with some light at the end, but please join me for the ride. **

**xoxo, HCH**


	2. Compression

**The Outsiders will always belong to the Queen, S.E. Hinton.**

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Darry's POV

Ponyboy said he and Johnny fell asleep in the lot earlier, so that's where we started our search. Sodapop kept looking over his shoulders as we walked, he hands jammed deep in his pockets. It was too late to see much of anyone else on the streets, but I could tell he was hoping we'd run into Pony any minute. When we reached the lot, it looked empty except for the lump in the far corner that was a sleeping Johnny Cade. Soda gave me a quick glance before he knelt down next to him and shook his shoulder lightly.

"Johnny," he said gently, "Johnny-cakes, wake up."

Johnny's eyes snapped open and he sat straight up with a jump, only settling down when he saw Sodapop level with him. He rubbed his eyes quickly with the back of his hand and blinked blearily a few times.

"What's going on?"

"Have you seen Ponyboy?" Soda asked, his brow furrowing when Johnny looked confused by the question.

"Sure, he was here earlier. We fell asleep talking and then he ran home, he said Darry would-" He cut off sharply when he noticed me standing on his other side. I could tell he was suddenly fully awake.

"Why, where is he?"

Soda was starting to look panicked now, and ran a hand nervously through his hair.

"We were hoping he was here with you. He came home and then…" Soda trailed off and looked up at me. I cringed and crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling unusually small and ashamed. _And then I hit him and ran him off._

"We fought about it being so late and he ran off," I finished gruffly, grateful that Sodapop didn't add anything more. "He didn't come back here?"

"No…" Johnny said slowly, his eyes flashing between us and growing wide. Soda cursed under he breath and stood up.

"Any idea where else he'd go?" I asked, already running through the options in my head. Maybe the school? Was he running some angry laps around the track? He wouldn't have gone to the Dingo this late, and I didn't think he had any money to go back to the drive-thru. The library was closed and so was the diner. Where else would he have gone?

Johnny and Soda were quiet for a moment and seemed to be running through the options themselves. Johnny stood up and snapped his jeans jacket, flipping the collar up against the wind that picked up then. He pulled a smoke out of his jacket pocket and fumbled with his lighter.

"He just said he was going home…" he repeated, taking a drag and shaking his head, "Sometimes we go to the park over on Sutton, but I don't know why he'd go over there this time of night."

Johnny looked around for a second, glancing up at the moon and staring for a moment before asking, "What time is it, anyway?"

I glanced at my watch and cringed again, "3:30."

"Let's check the park," Soda said, turning quickly and heading off in that direction without another word. Johnny brushed off his jeans and we followed behind Soda, taking long strides to catch up. The next few minutes were quiet as the three of us walked hurriedly together, each caught up in his own thoughts.

Please use your head, Pone. At least the park was on our side of town, a regular hang-out for lovers and kids. Pony was smart enough not to go wandering over to the South side on his own, especially at night. But then again, no one in our family had ever hit him before. He'd never run out of his own house in fear before. I hoped he was angry instead of scared, pissed off at me but with a clear enough head to look out for himself. He was fourteen, after all, not four, and he knew how to fight when he needed to. Soda and I had seen to that by giving him lessons in the backyard last year on how to throw a punch without breaking your thumb, how to duck and weave against a stronger opponent.

The streets were empty for most of the walk, just one set of headlights rounding the corner as we approached the park. I was scanning the street up ahead, but Johnny's eyes were locked on the car as is sped off in the opposite direction. His face suddenly looked grim and his strides got longer until he broke out into a jog towards the park. Soda and I picked up speed and followed him, barely sharing a grim look between us.

"Shit-" Johnny cursed and sprinted towards the fountain, and that's when I saw it. Someone lying on the ground next to the fountain, the light from the closest streetlamp glinting off the puddle of water on the sidewalk in front of it. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light, to process what I was looking at - Ponyboy, crumpled on his side in the sleeveless tee he'd run out in, with one shoe missing and wet hair plastered to his face and neck. And then I noticed that he wasn't breathing.

"Pony!" Soda shouting, dropping to the ground next to him and rolling him into his back. He was eerily still and didn't respond, and as his head lolled away from Soda, I saw that his lips were tinged with blue. Frantically, Soda pushed him over again onto his side and started beating on his back, shouting his name again.

"What- They-" Johnny stood over them, frozen in place as he surveyed the scene. I scanned quickly - water from the fountain was dripping down the cement side and joining the puddle Ponyboy was lying in, but all I could really focus on were his blue lips and his still chest. In a panic, I tried to remember the CPR lesson we'd been given one year at the beginning of football training. _Something about compressions and breaths. Was it compressions and then breaths, or the other way around? And then something about three and thirty, or was that something different, too?_ Soda's desperate moan snapped me out of my thoughts and I dropped down on Pony's other side. I pulled him out of Soda's hands, rolled him onto his back, and pressed my palms in hard near my best guess of where they should be. I counted out loud, trying to press hard in an even rhythm, grunting despite myself as I tried to keep the panic from taking over. Soda looked stunned. His hands hovered next to Ponyboy and his mouth hung open.

"Johnny!" I snapped without turning to look at him, "Get some help - now!"

I heard him take off and let the sound of his footsteps getting farther away ground me. I pinched Pony's nose and pushed a few sharp breaths into his mouth, satisfied when I saw his chest rise with the force of them. I paused for a moment, but he didn't move and I vaguely heard another strangled noise from Soda as I started steadily pounding on Ponyboy's chest again. I focused on the count...25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, breathe, breathe, breathe...but Ponyboy still didn't respond. I started again, but by the third round I could already feel my arms tiring and my rhythm growing slower. Panting, I kept going as I glanced up at Soda.

"Sodapop," I said, trying to keep my voice even, "I'm gonna need to you do this, too. At least one round."

His eyes widened in fear, but he jerked his head in a shaky nod and scooted closer.

"30 compressions, press right here," I said, emphasizing with a few hard presses on the left side of Ponyboy's chest, "then give him three breaths...like you just saw me do...I'll take over as soon as...I can keep up the speed again."

Soda didn't look confident, but he didn't ask any questions, just hovered as I gave Pony three breaths and then held my own for a moment as I prayed he would come back this time. Nothing. Soda moaned, but immediately sat up and pushed his hands down where I'd shown him.

"Harder!" I urged, cringing when I saw a tear slip down his face as he pressed down with more of his weight. I heard a sharp crack and Soda let out a strangled cry, but I shook my arms out frantically and shouted, "Just keep going!"

I hoped to God that Johnny had found a phone by now. That he knew what I meant when I said go get help and was calling for an ambulance. I didn't know how long Soda and I could keep doing this, or if we were even doing it right. _What if it was too late, anyway? How long had Ponyboy been out here like this? How long since he'd stopped breathing?_

_Keep it together, Darry!_

Soda was crying harder now and his pace was slowing down. Wordlessly, I pushed his hands out of the way and took over again, beginning the count once more. Focused, it wasn't until Soda breathed, "They're here, oh thank fuck, they're finally here," that I noticed the swirl of red and blue lights. All of a sudden, the world around me sharpened, a siren was blaring loudly and the park was full of people, paramedics shouting around us and pulling me away from Ponyboy.

"He's not breathing, he's still not breathing," I shouted stupidly before I noticed that they'd already taken over the compressions. Two paramedics were kneeling on either side of him where Soda and I had been a minute before while a third ran over with a stretcher. I watched helplessly, grabbing for Soda and catching him first by the sleeve of his jacket and pulling him against me. He was crying hard now, but he was completely silent and pale, gripping me as tightly as I did him.

A fourth paramedic with a grim face and a clipboard put a hand on my shoulder and asked, "What happened here?"

"I- I don't know-" I took a deep breath and cleared my throat, "We just found him here, he wasn't breathing, and I just started doing what I remembered."

I noticed Johnny standing off to the side, hugging himself tightly with one arm, a lit cigarette hanging loosely in the other, his eyes glued on the circle of people around Ponyboy's prone form.

"You did the right thing, son," the paramedic said with a quick, tight smile, "We've got it from here. We're going to take him to St. Francis, okay?"

Soda seemed to focus then with a start and he let go of me.

"Can I ride with him?" The medic looked quickly back and forth between us, and then over at Ponyboy before giving Soda a sharp nod.

"Just stay back while we work, but yeah. I'll let you know when to hop in."

The next few minutes passed in a blur that still seemed to last hours. Johnny was standing next to us now, the three of us huddled behind the medics, too scared to look at each other, too scared to hope, until finally -

"We got him!" I let out a huge breath I hadn't remembered holding and a choked sob escaped my throat before I could hold it back. Ponyboy came into view. He was on the stretcher and a medic was securing a mask over his mouth and nose as they loaded him into the ambulance.

"Let's go -" the medic waved Soda over and with a slam of the door they were off, leaving me and Johnny standing next to the fountain, all hard breathing and unanswered questions.

* * *

Ponyboy's POV

Maybe death wasn't so bad. I felt like I was floating, nothing but blackness around me, and yet I didn't feel scared.

_How did I get here?_

I couldn't remember and thinking back anywhere beyond the present moment felt like an immense effort. If I could just close my eyes now, I could sleep forever…

_Water. There had been water,_ I remembered. And like waves, the fear suddenly crashed over me again and again. It felt like physical pain, fear so strong it was making a fist around my heart and squeezing so hard I couldn't breathe. I needed to make it stop, I would do anything.

_I would do anything to make it stop. But there was nothing to do except pretend I was somewhere else, shut my senses off and leave my body for a while. I was up there in ceiling, floating among the pipes and flying between the beams. I looked down for a moment and saw myself, trapped underneath him, my arms held at the wrists above my head as I slammed into the wall repeatedly. I had to look away, I couldn't watch myself like that anymore. I had to keep floating or my heart might burst from the pressure._

The pressure was painful, the fist around my heart joined by larger fists around my lungs that seemed to squeeze even tighter when I tried to breathe. It hurt less not to even try. I could hold it. I could hold my breath until the pain passed, like I'd always been able to do.

_Down below, I could hear myself gasping for air. He had a hand on the back of my head and pushed me back under the surface, but up in the rafters I couldn't feel a thing. I couldn't remember my own name, but it didn't matter. If that was me down there, if those were my lips turning blue and my neck being crushed by his thick fingers, I didn't need to be anyone. That could by any boy down there. Who said it had to be me?_

_The boy below me wasn't moving now, just breathing harshly as he lay on his back on a bare mattress. One man moved the bucket of ice water, now only half full, off to the side with a few swift kicks, sloshing even more water onto the cushion. It wasn't a bed. I slept in a bed with Sodapop, warm and safe, with Mom and Dad in the next room snoring. This boy wasn't lying on a bed, just a mattress on the floor without sheets or blankets._

_The radio was always playing. Even up near the ceiling, I could hear the buzz of canned voices, notes that seemed disconnected. Was it a song or a story? I couldn't even tell, I could just hear the discord tickling at my consciousness. It grated on my nerves and made my skin crawl, but I didn't want to hear what was being said beneath it, either. The noise was masking noises that were even worse, ones that would put pressure in my chest again and make me wish I could cut a hole in the ceiling and float even farther away._

I wanted to open a hole in my chest and relieve some of the pressure. That would help, I knew it. But my arms weren't cooperating, my limbs weren't listening to my commands, and my chest was slowly caving in. If this was death, it was horrible, but somehow it felt a lot like life. If I was struggling, I must've still been alive.

_It wasn't worth it to struggle. I knew I was supposed to fight, always, to the bitter end. Be the underdog and keep swinging. But the odds were against me, five to one, and I had nowhere left to run. Every door was blocked by arms that held me down. Every window was boarded up with promises that this time would be the last time if I just behaved, but none ever cracked even an inch no matter how many times I held still and bit my cheek until I tasted blood. I just wanted to go home._

I should've never left home. I couldn't even remember why I'd gone or how I'd gotten here, but I knew I wasn't with my brothers and I wasn't with my parents. I was nowhere, and I wanted to go home, back to the place where I could breathe again and where my chest didn't hurt so much.

* * *

For anyone who has known this pain - Xoxo, HCH


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